I-n-j-i-n

I'm sort of tempted to buy Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV.. Then again, there are like a dozen, much superior versions of it out there. But the nostalgia factor..

Wow, were you high while making that comment? So I guess stuff like Eternal Darkness and all those great Rareware games in Nintendo's past were not credible Nintendo games at all then? And no matter how you can spin it, God of War, Sly, Ratchet & Clank , Shadow of the Colossus and a lot of Sony 1st party games have been almost flawless examples of pure gaming in recent memory. Just because Nintendo has the more marketable names doesn't necessarily make them the only 1st parties around. But I would have to agree with the notion that Sony 1st parties tends to be ignored because they don't strut around their big buttocks of it being a Sony property unlike how Nintendo does it, shoving their franchise names up everyones' throats.

I feel that those reviews are way too harsh. TMNT 1 and 2 were pretty campy and I thought they were very fun both. TMNT3 obviously being an unexcusable abomination.

Don't forget that the PS3 apparently lacks the luster that the 360 games have due to the bottleneck memory in the Cell architecture. So some games might not look as good as they might have been expected.

Summoning stuff to kill Yiazmat is the stupidest thing to do ever. Unless you really want to sit though a few thousand summoning spells that do miniscule damage. The toughest part of the Yiazmat fight is the boredom of the 95% of the fight (I simply picture-in-picture play it while watching TV), then the annoying last 5% of the fight where he uses a lot of cheap fast attacks. All you really need to do is concentrate on Curaga, Arise and the occasional Berserk for one offensive character. Hastega in the Gambit is great too. Oh, and maybe taking down Yiazmat's overall defense with Expose (you have to repeat exposing Yiazmat 20 times each time you rezone and come back).

This is a decent look into the TMNT thing: http://tv.ign.com/articles/774/774796p1.html The new TMNT admittedly isn't bad, but that new theme music seriously makes my head hurt. I don't really care if the goofier, kids-friendly version is a semi-bastardization of the source material if it's going to do everything so much better than the ones that tries to copy the feel of the comics.

DOA games so far has been pretty fun but in that button-masher sort of way. I have said this before, but I'm not really a fighting game fan but VF4 got me hooked and I think I'm close to spending a hundred hours on it. VF5 just looks great and it'll likely get updates in time for the 360 launch. Viva Pinata is one game I'm aiming to get once I buy the system with all the colorful animal-raising gameplay. Then there's the probable Ninja Gaiden 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect and other action/FPS types of games with more depth than the usual games of their types. As for traditional Japanese RPGs, there's Blue Dragon made by Hironobu Sakaguchi (FF developer of old, duh) and Eternal Sonata. And maybe a not-so-traditional JRPG in Lost Odyssey. Also, I hear that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was just released on Xbox Live Arcade. There's surely going to be more modified conversions of older games like it in the future.

I'm pretty sure Sony was borderline shocked at the news since games like Ace Combat, Katamari Damacy and Devil May Cry were de facto exclusives for Sony's consoles as long as anyone can remember. They never threatened to leave for the Xbox or any Nintendo system until now. Except Sony's direct competitor isn't even Nintendo, but 360 as of now and 360 is the one with a huge lead and its sales are actually still pretty strong even with all its competitors out the gates now.

I hear the black version may become the new premium for summer or possibly for the upcoming holiday season though. I wonder if that rumor will be true since that'd be a $70 price drop after only a few months of limited release.

I'm sooooooooo glad I didn't splurge my money on a 360. It was getting tempting too. Now I can just jump straight in on the new black version. And I was wanting the HDMI too. Great news.

The kid is playing us all like a fiddle.

Actually, there are quite a few words for the possible MGS4 rumors. Konami is not helping by constantly being coy about it.

I hear the PC ports are generally terrible because they don't put enough development effort into them. RE4 on PC especially, got a thrashing on game reviews. PC-idiocy aside, I think this is a sign of things to come for the 360.

360 I can understand, but PC? Are they crazy?

Maybe it has to do with how there aren't too many notable games for the Wii yet aside from their typically great Nintendo lineup. Why waste space when you can only sell Nintendo games and still make a lot of profit? This is why I feel that Nintendo being too successful at their own game could be sorta bad in that sense.

Sega Classics Collection and Dragon Quest 8 are the best value a single 'game' has offered me. I seem to repeat these games over and over, but Robot Alchemic Drive and SkyGunner are constantly overlooked games and I had just as much playing them as many other supposed AAA titles. Other notable inclusions could be Xenosaga trilogy and Suikoden V. I can't believe that Suikoden 3 made the list since though it was an epic game, the little nags in the game made it drag out. Suikoden 3 wouldn't even make my top 30 PS2 games. And I can't believe every lists on the planet ignores the Sly Cooper games. Way better than most Nintendo platformer efforts as of late.

I may as well post an AMV that won a few awards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isywletO1vA Great music, great show, great sync, etc etc.

I rarely even listen to music except for classical music and the occasionally funny country or rap music now. Almost all of them comedy skits, voice actor bloopers, shock jock radio shows and podcasts. Maybe 1000 files on my MP3 player tops.

$100+ for any game is too much. Maybe except for Phantasy Star 4 in its day.. Which is funny since I'm really anticipating getting the $5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade game for Xbox Live Arcade once I get a 360.

I don't think the problem is to consider the entirety of games as art. It's whether they COULD be considered to be such if we choose to do so in fleeting, critical glimpse. I can agree that some purely capitalistic forms of art or entertainment can cheapen the art in some ways, but I doubt it'll make much impact overall as there'll always be the art forms that goes purely for the expression in itself. Some games can do that too, and again, I think sometimes they can gain prominence as an art when we look back on how they influenced our lives or vision many years from now. I think that retrospect is crucial in considering the artistic nature of a lot of games as well as look at the various inspirations and pick bone with the artistic goals of a game on top of their money making aspects. It doesn't mean we can't look at the modern games and their artistic qualities too. It's just that if we're to look at such in terms of artistic qualities, we sometimes might have to go beyond just the visuals. It could have to do with the music like in Uematsu composed games, or the narrative like in Earthbound or the experiences various games aim to offer. In that popular culture sense, there's the artistic merit upon criticism. Not because the games exude artistic sensibilities by itself. I have to disagree with that one. I think it's a very romantic thing to say that money destroys everything, but that's only the means to an end, especially with something that dedicates a lot of time and effort. Ultimately, people usually will look at the end result no matter what their intentions may have been. Looking at the token sequels like Madden games, the end result is that it's just like all the other games we've seen like it. Even taking out the intent, we can see the results right there.

The thing with MGS2 was NOT its story or cinematic aspect or the cheesy/semi-serious action. It was how it pretty much was a postmodern work of Kojima responding to gamer response to the first game. He only said that dozens of times in interviews so far.

I agree with some of those points. The thing about pop art (the general type. Not the post modern movement of making mundane items into art) in general including movies, books, music and video games is that a lot of their critique in the artistic sense typically comes in the postmodern point of view. We see the aftereffects of what they mean to our culture and society and go from there. Their intent can always be misconstrued or developed into the sense of artistic aesthetics. I don't think it has to be so crazy as to get into the quantum relativity of it all (which makes sense since just about everything in life is generally a popular, agreed-upon consensus, but that's another matter entirely). That's what the likes of Inafune and Kojima keeps getting stuck on. The intent, intent, intent. As I have analogized, decorated coffins were never intended to be art. Weapons weren't intended to be art. Hell, even some Renaissance art in their day served just as much a religious purpose as it did as something pretty to look at. And somebody mentioned how the forgettable qualities of games as art are. Then again, that is because the primary purpose of games is to be entertainment forms. People look back at something like Mickey Mouse and we do see it as a form of art looking back on it. Yet it has and always will be a symbol of extreme consumerism and commercialism. Art doesn't have to have only one purpose as being art in itself. It's not a matter of something being a 'high art' as it is that they're 'traditional' in a sense as art on canvas or sculpture is deigned as the most basic of artistic expressionism. Even though I consider games as definitely a form of art, I would not say it is a traditional type. Because it clearly isn't. But that doesn't mean it can't ever be 'considered' an art form. The key word is 'considered', because again, entertainment mediums tends to serve multiple purposes.

That is way too subjective and you know it. I mean, even motorcycles and industrial items have been featured in world famous museums as art before. Scientific, industrial, pop artifacts can turn into something that can be viewed as something that influences our way of life, our culture, our outlook, etcetera. That is what art is. Traditional art goes for such aspects primarily. But it does not mean that other things that has a different primary focus can't be seen as art. Also, art exhibits featuring video games has been done many times before, so it's not a matter of it not being accepted at all. Because it has to a lot of prestigious art institutes before. So there is precedence. Also, just because a few game developers tries to justify the art snobs' views about it doesn't mean everybody feels the same way. What about the game developers who do see it as an artform? You don't suppose we just bulldoze through their opinion as if they don't exist? Going back to Inafune's point that 'games are sold so they can't be art' argument... I mean let's talk about Egyptian coffins with murals on them. They are CASKETS with DEAD PEOPLE in them. And THEY are considered art/cultural-artifacts. Samurai Swords and other weapons of war has been shown in museums before for their cultural impact and wildly varying artistic aesthetics. And they were meant to KILL people.

Not really. ALL great music have structure, just not the rote, classical types. Even Reggae to the most chaotic sounding Rap can have intricacies that maybe only enthusiasts may be able to pick up. It's no less insulting than to say that subjectivity doesn't factor in at all. In which it does. Even for the 'serious musicians'.

That is a paradox that nobody can really wrap their heads around. Some people I know are quick to snub popular music simply because they're popular. But a lot of them are actually very good at what they do or at the very least, know how to sell their music to be that successful. The other way is true as well since some great musicians just couldn't find an outlet to sell their stuff. I really don't buy some romantic ideal that underground artists stay that way because they simply want to. I'm sure if they had the chance to make it big, they would.